Update on HGTV featured Madrigal Lofts unit

Back in December HGTV aired an episode of Real Estate Intervention featuring a ground floor 1BR unit at the Madrigal Lofts. Immediately upon watching the episode I was a bit incredulous at the pricing advice the HGTV expert, Mike Aubrey, provided the owner. Aubrey suggested that the price needed to be dropped to $339,500 to match the listing price of a 1BR unit at 777 7th Street NW in Chinatown. However this “expert” advice was based on a sloppy comparable as the Chinatown unit didn’t have a parking spot like the Madrigal condo did.

At the end of the episode the seller decided to take the property off the market rather than follow Aubrey’s advice. While I’m not certain exactly what point in time the show was taped my guess in July/August 2010. The owner put the property back on the market this year for $379,900 and went to closing in March for $378,000 with a $5,000 seller subsidy. That’s a net of nearly $35K more than the HGTV suggested listing price.

On a related note, the unit at 777 7th Street that HGTV leveraged as a comp did not sell before being pulled off the market.

Comments

I love it when Aubrey is on Capitol Hill, or somewhere in the middle of Baltimore, and he marches the homeowners to a supposed comp “less than one mile from your house.” And then the homeowner is like, “You know, if I sent my karate instructor to this block, with a bulletproof vest and an AK-47, at 1:30 in the afternoon, I’d give him maybe a 50-50 shot of surviving …”

I live at Madrigal and I’m an agent – as more proof of how far off he was I sold 3 1br units here. Two before the show aired. One for $26K more than his estimate in Oct, then two for $41K more, one in Nov and one later on in Feb. They all sold in a week and I staged them myself so they were as HGTV ready as the one on the show. A mile is insane for a downtown property!

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Thais Austin has lived in the Mount Vernon Triangle since 2006 with her dog Davis. She is an active community volunteer with the Mount Vernon Square Neighborhood Association, Mount Vernon Triangle CID, and with the DC Association of REALTORS. She brings to the blog a background in journalism, urban planning, and real estate and development. She is a REALTOR with Long and Foster, officing out of both Logan Circle and Bethesda Gateway locations and can be contacted at thais@lnf.com.